The only rational problem with Atheism

[Anymouse]

As an Atheist, there is one issue for me that is a problem. Although evolution is easily provable and is clearly a reality, it does not answer the question of "how this all began in the first place." Science itself acknowledges cause and effect. Something in motion has to be set into motion. A car doesn't accelerate without you pushing the gas pedal. So what is pushing the gas pedal of life. I have heard the best argument for god as "the first cause" and everything we see now is the result of that initial action.

Is there any examples or pattern in life where something has come into existence from nothing. Then again this would raise a further question, "do we have the ability to see what caused this something to apparently come out of nothing. Any thoughts.

My understanding of the scientific method is that a scientist is comfortable with the answer "For now, we do not know." And evolution is only fact, subject to new information that may change, modify, amplify, or completely debunk the theory. While I cannot imagine such, major scientific theories have been replaced before when our understanding improves, and evolution is no exception. To accept evolution as factual to the best of our understanding now is the best way to approach that discipline. To accept it as evolution is the only way makes it dangerously close to religious dogma.

That doesn't mean no one is looking for what kicked off the football game of the Universe. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed (cyclical universe, string theory, &c.) The presumption in your statement is "how this all began in the first place." Science also acknowledges infinity. Effects preceded by causes, stretching infinitely far back in time, is not beyond the understanding of science.

It is beyond the understanding of anyone who treats "cause and effect" as a presumption for a first cause. But even those that propose a creation story as a first cause cannot answer the question "And what caused that cause?"

An infinity of the physical universe, regardless of what particular mechanism started it on its current iteration, is much simpler to propose than an outside intervention setting everything in motion. By that same law of cause-and-effect, one must then propose a cause for the intervener, or admit "we do not know." You can admit that without proposing any intervention which has no evidence.

Fnord. James.